Knowing Isn’t the Same As Understanding

Read Time:5 Minute, 29 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Strange Dark
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Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director(s): Chris Messineo
Writer(s): Chris Messineo
Cast: Nili Bassman, Caleb Scott, Carmen Borla, Bates Wilder, John Beckwith, Carson Jean Holley, Athan Sporek
Where to Watch: will be available January 16, 2026, on Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home here: www.geni.us

RAVING REVIEW: What happens to trust when the future stops being abstract and starts knocking at your door? THE STRANGE DARK frames its central question with quiet confidence, stripping science fiction down to its most intimate stakes and asking how certainty corrodes relationships long before it saves them. This is a chamber thriller built less on spectacle than on erosion—of faith, of communication, of the fragile agreements that keep families functioning when reality no longer behaves as expected.

Set almost entirely within a single home over the course of one night, the film understands that limitation as an asset rather than a constraint. The walls don’t just contain the story; they compress it. Information arrives in fragments, perspectives contradict one another, and the audience is forced into the same position as its protagonist—listening carefully, doubting constantly, and recalibrating assumptions with every new revelation. The science fiction element isn’t treated as a shiny concept to be explained away, but as a destabilizing presence that seeps into ordinary domestic rhythms until nothing feels reliable anymore.

Nili Bassman anchors the film with a performance that does most of the heavy lifting. Her Susan isn’t written as a passive observer caught between louder personalities. Instead, she becomes the emotional center of gravity, absorbing competing narratives and reacting with a grounded mix of skepticism, fear, and reluctant adaptability. Bassman plays uncertainty not as hysteria, but as exhaustion—the kind that comes from being asked to choose between impossible options with incomplete information. Her restraint keeps the film from tipping into melodrama, even when the script pushes toward heightened tension.

Opposite her, Caleb Scott brings an intentionally unsettling ambiguity to Edgar. The character’s claim of seeing the future is never played for easy menace or obvious delusion. Scott avoids signaling which direction the audience should lean, allowing the performance to hover in a space where sincerity and manipulation feel uncomfortably adjacent. That ambiguity is essential, because THE STRANGE DARK isn’t interested in proving whether Edgar is right or wrong—it’s interested in what belief itself does to the people forced to live with it.

The supporting cast fills out the world with varying degrees of effectiveness. Carmen Borla and Bates Wilder, in particular, add texture by embodying external pressures that don’t neatly align with either side of the central conflict. Their presence reinforces the film’s underlying tension: that certainty is always contextual, always dependent on who’s speaking and what they stand to gain. Even when individual performances feel slightly uneven, the ensemble commitment keeps the film’s internal logic intact.

Structurally, the film takes risks that don’t always land cleanly. Its nonlinear impulses and segmented storytelling aim to mirror the instability of time and perception, but occasionally the mechanics call attention to themselves. There are moments where momentum stalls not because the story lacks intrigue, but because the film becomes overly invested in withholding clarity. Mystery is its engine, but the refusal to release information at key moments can feel less like tension-building and more like hesitation.

Where THE STRANGE DARK succeeds most is in its thematic discipline. It never confuses scale with importance. The future of the world may or may not be at stake, but the film keeps its focus firmly on the future of a family—and how quickly love turns transactional when survival becomes conditional. The science fiction framing allows the story to interrogate control, consent, and emotional labor without spelling out its intentions. The smartest moments are the quietest ones, where choices are made not because they’re correct, but because they’re the only ones left.

Visually, the film keeps things clean and functional. The cinematography favors clarity over flourish, which serves the narrative even if it limits visual memorability. The production design subtly reinforces the sense of domestic normalcy under threat, using familiar spaces as psychological pressure points rather than aesthetic showcases. The score, used sparingly, supports tension without overwhelming scenes that benefit from silence and unease.

As an independent production, THE STRANGE DARK shows admirable restraint. It understands what it can accomplish within its resources and doesn’t overreach for spectacle it can’t sustain. At the same time, that restraint sometimes translates into a film that feels smaller than its ideas. The premise invites deeper philosophical excavation than the script ultimately commits to, leaving some thematic avenues underexplored.

THE STRANGE DARK is a solid, thoughtful genre piece that values emotional stakes over conceptual fireworks. It’s engaging, well-acted, and clearly made with intention, even if it doesn’t fully capitalize on the depth of its own questions. What lingers isn’t the mechanics of its mystery, but the discomfort of its premise—the idea that knowing the future might not save us, and that certainty can be just as destructive as ignorance. That tension, quietly sustained, is what gives the film its staying power.

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[photo courtesy of NJ FILM SCHOOL, CHROMA]

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